[Mapserver-users] Do NOT use 'make install' with mapserver

[Vincent Schut]

Ian,

you encountered one of the special mapserver secret do's & don't's... Initiate 
knowledge, so to speak...
*** Never use mapserver's make install target! ***
Firstly, indeed it does not work properly (afaik), so you could be very right 
in that it is ignoring the prefix option.
Secondly, you will be in trouble when you want to upgrade to a newer version 
and recompile mapserver. Make install copies the file 'libmap.a' in /usr/lib 
or /usr/local/lib (not sure which of these), and if you compile a newer 
version of mapserver, it will link against this old version of the library 
instead of the new one that has just been created during your new compilation 
process but still recides in the mapserver source dir. Some people had 
serious trouble updating mapserver, till they found out about this easter egg 
and removed this libmap.a file from their lib dir. You don't need it there, 
it's just an error. Remove it, or it will give you trouble...
Btw, as installing mapserver usually means only copying one or two files, you 
can easily do that by hand instead of using make install.

Maybe it's about time someone of the - don't misunderstand me, greatly 
appreciated - development team fixes this, or just removes the make install 
target, or at least puts something about this in the docs / readme files?

Regards,
Vincent Schut.

On Thursday 24 April 2003 12:11, Ian MacColl wrote:
> Hello:
>
> Does mapserver configure ignore --prefix and friends?
>
> I'm trying to install mapserver in a cgi-bin directory. The make
> install target seems to use the INSTALL paths at the top of Makefile.
> However, these seem to be simply copied from Makefile.in, rather than
> being set by the configure script via the --prefix options.
>
> Is that right?
>
> Obviously I can edit Makefile by hand, but that seems
>
> thanks
>
> Ian
>
> _______________________________________________
> Mapserver-users mailing list
> Mapserver-users at lists.gis.umn.edu
> http://lists.gis.umn.edu/mailman/listinfo/mapserver-users

-- 
______________________________________
Vincent Schut (schut at sarvision.com)
Sarvision B.V.
Wageningen, The Netherlands
www.sarvision.com